A long-lost duet between Carly Simon and The Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger has been found after more than 45 years in storage.
In his vast and storied career, Mick Jagger has been involved in a lot of musical projects. In fact, we once touched on the fact that Jagger once recorded an unreleased album with a young blues rock group called the Red Devils which we’re dying to hear.
However, while that one might be an exercise in futility, a long lost duet between Jagger and Carly Simon has in fact surfaced, after close to 50 years of being lost.
As the Associated Press reports, Carly Simon and Mick Jagger reportedly got together in 1972 after recording Simon’s ‘You’re So Vain’ to record a track ostensibly titled ‘Fragile’, which has never been heard by the public before.
The track was reportedly found on a tape owned by Rolling Stones collector Matt Lee, though he’s kept quiet on just exactly where the tape came from. After revealing that he sent a digital copy of the tape to Rolling Stone in hopes of passing it onto Carly Simon, Lee has explained he doesn’t want any of the fame or fortune that comes with such a find.
“I’m not doing it for the money,” Lee explained. “I’m a collector. My motive for sending it to Rolling Stone was to pass it to Carly.”
While the track’s recent discovery might be big news for hardcore fans of both musicians, its existence isn’t unknown, with Carly Simon talking about the song to Rolling Stone back in 2016. “We had this little back and forth at the piano for about an hour,” she explained of her collaboration with Mick Jagger.
“Richard Perry has been looking for that tape for years. Someone from Warner Brothers must have it,” before noting that the track had lyrics that included the line “Funny, funny, funny, funny, funny/How love can make you cry.”
Oddly, this isn’t the biggest find of lost recordings we’ve seen recently, with David Bowie’s very first demo ever recorded being found in a bread basket just last month.
“I also decided that David was the best person to sing it and give the right interpretation. So this became the very first recording of David Jones singing 55 years ago,” explained David Hadfield, who not only found the recording, but served as the drummer and manager for David Bowie’s group, The Konrads.
“There is no other recording of the demo featuring David as lead in existence. Decca initially turned us down, but when they eventually gave us an audition later that year, vocalist Roger Ferris was the lead voice and David sang backing harmonies.”
Considering that these long-lost classics keep on turning up, who’s to say that we won’t soon be able to gaze upon some of our most-wanted pieces of unreleased musical history in awed wonder?
Check out Carly Simon’s ‘You’re So Vain’:
